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Summer in the Marsh

“And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on trees, I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer.”― F. Scott Fitzgerald

What began as an impulse last fall to go into the marsh to photograph the graceful movement of the withering cattails turned into an eight month project that now spans four seasons. I have appreciated the beauty of this marsh for years, but until I started to pay closer attention, I didn’t realize how many of its nuances and changes through the seasons that I had been missing. And I am sure there are countless more I have yet to catch, even now.

I rose from marsh mud,

algae, equisetum, willows,

sweet green, noisy

birds and frogs

—Lorine Niedecker

The marsh in summer is a lush, profusion of green in every imaginable shade. It seemed to take forever for the first hints of spring color to migrate from the treetops and the edges of the marsh into its center, yet when it did happen, it felt sudden and dramatic.

“…as if last year’s mistakes had been wiped clean by summer.” —WallaceStegner

Please note, for the summer video, HD resolution makes a huge difference in the clarity of the images, more so than for any of the other seasons. HD is enabled by default, but if your playback is choppy, you can unselect HD for faster playback, although at greatly reduced video quality.

Filmed on July 23rd and 24th of this year in the marsh behind The Marsh health and wellness center in Minnetonka, Minnesota. The music in this video is The Jaybird by Wall Matthews. Performed by Matthews live in the studio at WFMU on the Irene Trudel show, the song is used with the gracious permission of the artist.